The Best Hotels for Foodies in Nice, France

Bring your swimsuit, flip-flops and a big appetite to Hotel Le Méridien, where you’ll soon be swirling your toes in the Mediterranean Sea, taking a morning swim in the outdoor pool and dining among the stars on the rooftop terrace. Presiding high above the Promenade des Anglais below, the restaurant, La Terrasse, serves up dishes with local ingredients such as organic sea bass with a zesty twist of citronella, squid wok with locally grown courgettes and filleted free-range chicken with organic risotto. Wash it all down with a skyline mule cocktail, combining gin, ginger beer and lime juice.

The Hyatt, on the Promenade des Anglais, boasts every modern convenience you could wish for, from a heated outdoor pool to a casino and a private beach on the doorstep. It is most loved for its in-house restaurant, Le 3e, which champions seasonal, organic and locally sourced Mediterranean dishes, including chef specialities such as duck foie gras and fresh sea bass. When spring starts to bloom, grab a seat on the restaurant terrace and sip crisp rosé wine while savouring the salty ocean breeze.

If the walls of the 1912-built Hotel Negresco could talk, they’d tell tales of visiting princesses, mustachioed Surrealist painters and ’60s rock sensations. They’d gush about their scene-stealing role in just about every French movie set on the Riviera and their hoards of 17th-century oil portraits, ringletted marble sculptures and ’70s-style carpets. But what they really wouldn’t shut up about is Michelin-star restaurant the Chantecler, stocking more than 15,000 bottles of wine in its cellars, and promising old-school gastronomical theatrics with waiters flambéing and carving meat among the vintage seating.

The enchanting Château de la Chèvre d’Or is hidden in clifftop wilderness, just a short drive from the Promenade des Anglais. The pace here is leisurely: spend your mornings enjoying the fragrance of creeping bougainvillea, jasmine and roses as you stroll through labyrinthine gardens, passing stag sculptures grazing on manicured lawns, concrete dolphins leaping out of a fountain and a golden goat perched on rocks. Meanwhile, afternoons are best spent gazing at coastal views from the kidney-shaped pool, while evenings are centred around Mediterranean-inspired meals in the Michelin-star titular restaurant, or seasonal dishes on the bucolic terrace of Les Remparts.

A slice of Provençal paradise, Le Mas de Pierre sits on an estate among wind-tousled willows, trimmed hedges and the warped trunks of hundred-year-old olive trees. Wake to the clucking of roaming hens, head out onto the balcony, and sip a morning brew from your in-room Nespresso machine as the citrusy scents of lemon and orange trees waft by on the breeze. The lavish breakfast buffet is complimentary, so pile up your plate with continental cheeses and sizzling bacon, but save space for dinner at the Stone Table; the decadent restaurant promises locally sourced dishes such as organic egg from Vence, sea bream plucked from the Mediterranean and hand-picked fig from the grounds.